This Year, The Trees Are Just Going Nuts

This Year, The Trees Are Going Nuts!

This is one of the great years for the fruits of the forest and front lawn.

It is one of those times, about once in a decade or so, when acorns and other nuts are practically ankle deep in the woods, and everywhere underfoot in the suburbs. Overhead, too.

How many people were conked on the head by an acorn this fall? How many car hoods resounded with the deep "thonk" a hickory nut or acorn makes when it plummets 30 feet and lands on metal? Many.

"Acorn production was really quite extraordinary," said William H. Smith, a professor of forest biology at Yale University who visited a stand of oaks in Hamden last week. "It seems that across-the-board nut production was high."

A bumper crop of woodland nuts has important ecological implications. It affects populations of some species of wildlife, including wild turkeys and chipmunks. And it is critical in how the forest renews itself.

It is mostly in these bumper crop years that the number of nuts -- seeds -- exceeds the appetites of all the woodland animals that feed upon them. Those seeds that escape the blue jays, turkeys and squirrels will become seedlings next spring, the future of the forest.

"A bumper crop, especially with acorns, occurs about once in 10 years," said George R. Stephens, chief of the department of forestry and horticulture at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. "We had a good crop in the early '80s, '83 or '84. I know in certain places there was a good crop in '67 and another in '77."

Genetics and weather are thought to be factors in a big year. Many forest species seem inclined every so often to produce larger nut crops, Smith said. Favorable weather conditions are a must.

For red oaks, a common woodland tree in Connecticut, the events that led to this year's crop began in the summer of 1989, when the trees began to produce flower buds. Red oak acorns mature over two years.

For other species, including the white oak, which produces its acorns in one year, the process began in 1990.

For a maximum crop, it was important that the weather wasn't too rainy when the trees were dispersing their pollen in the wind.

"After that, you have to have good weather for development, an absence of late-spring freezes," Stephens said. "They can often devastate either the flower or the young fruit crop."

Sunny, dry weather in the summer may also be a factor, Stephens said.

Another factor is whether a tree has produced a big crop the year before. Two huge crops in a row are very unlikely, Stephens said.

For animals, this crop is the difference between feasting and just getting by. Blue jays eat acorns and often store them in exposed areas where the sun will melt the snow in winter, making the nuts accessible when food is scarce.

Chipmunks store the acorns for winter underground. Deer nibble them all fall.

Wild turkeys, which have become more numerous in Connecticut since they were reintroduced in the 1970s, exist on acorns in fall and winter.

"It helps them build up a good fat reserve, and that is always helpful if we have a long period of heavy snow," said Peter L. Good, wildlife research supervisor at the state Department of Environmental Protection's Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington. "It keeps them in better condition for reproducing."

The same is true of squirrels, of which there are about 3 million in Connecticut. "Right now, the squirrel population is pretty high, and this will only make it higher," Good said.

For drivers, the nut crop is good news. There are so many acorns the squirrels don't have to roam far to find them. So squirrels don't need to dash across as many roads, where cars and trucks take a heavy toll.

While squirrels love the acorns, humans should leave them alone.

Because they contain tannic acid, acorns can cause an upset stomach in a child, even in small amounts, says the Connecticut Poison Control Center at the University of Connecticut Health Center. A child ingesting larger amounts could develop other symptoms, and medical authorities would recommend that vomiting be induced, said Laura C. Kubeck, education coordinator at the center.

Of course, Henry David Thoreau tried them.

"By the side of J. P. Brown's grainfield I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the woodside, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible," he wrote in his journal on Oct. 8, 1851.

"Their sweetness is like the sweetness of bread, and to have discovered this palatableness in this neglected nut, the whole world is to me the sweeter for it."

The next day Thoreau went out and got some more.

"Boiled a quart of acorns for breakfast," he wrote, "but found them not so palatable as raw, having acquired a bitterish taste, perchance from being boiled with the shells and skins on, yet one would soon get accustomed to this."